The Last Rose of Shanghai(3)
Ernest had to think fast. They were turning onto a crowded street with shops selling jars of pickles and bags of roasted chestnuts and dried mushrooms, and he was being pushed around by the jostling long-robed men weaving through the bicycles, carriages, and one-wheel wagons.
“Sir, what are those called?” Ernest tossed his head in the direction of a skinny fellow who raced past pulling two poles attached to a vehicle shaped like a baby stroller. A diversion. He had seen these vehicles earlier, the pullers perspiring profusely while their customers sat with their legs crossed as if it were the most enjoyable ride. That transportation, perhaps, was the strangest sight of all things in Shanghai. He felt sorry for the pullers, the human oxen.
“Rickshaws.” The Sikh steered him away. “New to Shanghai? This way.”
“You seem like a good man, sir. I’m sorry about this.” He thrust hard into the Sikh’s chest with his elbow, pulled away, and ran. He raced past a carriage, a row of rickshaws, and then a man plodding along, carrying a pole with a basket at both ends, each holding a small child. A shout came from behind Ernest: the Sikh, at his heels, had crashed into a basket, and the children had dropped to the ground. Murmuring an apology, Ernest passed a red double-decker bus and raced into an alley behind an art deco building. At a building with red bricks, he looked behind. The policeman was not in sight.
He smoothed his coat, ran his fingers through his hair—he had lost his hat—and put on his glove, the glove for his scarred hand, which he had taken off to shake hands with the hotel manager earlier. He did not care about fashion, but the glove was the only accessory he couldn’t part with. Without it, he often felt as if he were walking naked in public.
Spinning around to check once more that he wasn’t being followed, he submerged into the tide of the crowd on the street. He’d had a rough start looking for a job. Not a big deal. He should try again.
Ernest Reismann, a Jew fleeing from Nazi Germany, had just landed in Shanghai on an Italian ocean liner hours ago. After he was transported from the wharf to the Embankment Building, the temporary shelter for Jewish refugees, he had left his suitcase on the bunk bed with his sister, Miriam, and gone out to look for a job without changing his clothes.
He didn’t want to waste time. The twenty Reichsmarks, all that he’d been permitted to bring out of Germany, had been spent. He planned to find a job as quickly as possible and then settle down in an apartment so Miriam would have a place to stay.
He had gone straight to Sassoon’s hotel, located at the bustling waterfront where the ocean liner had docked. The wealthy Briton, Ernest had heard, was most charitable, having given an entire floor of his Embankment Building, free of charge, to shelter the refugees so they could get on their feet in this foreign city. But Ernest was unable to meet the man, only the bespectacled hotel manager who scrutinized him through his glasses and said they were not hiring. Disappointed, Ernest had been passing through the lobby when he saw those schmucks throw bottles at the girl. He had rushed to help, memories of pogroms, violence, and pain fresh in his mind.
He had never seen a Chinese girl in Berlin. The one today had been fascinating, a creature of beauty. She’d had an oval face, flawless pale skin, expressive black eyes, a small nose, and red lips. Her hair was short, reaching her shoulders, her bangs evenly trimmed and meticulously curled, framing her face. She seemed about his age, but her mannerisms were sophisticated, distant, with a strong sense of aloofness.
He hoped, with all his heart, that he would see her again.
Suddenly feeling exhilarated, Ernest looked around. He was standing in front of a five-story building in smooth art deco design, near a classical building graced with a statue of a Greek god and a neoclassical edifice crowned with a dome. And Sassoon’s towering hotel with a green pyramid was a few feet away. It seemed in his escape he had circled back to the bustling waterfront area again. He began to walk, searching, peering at the French, Danish, Italian, and English inscriptions on the buildings. They were international banks, American liquor trading companies, British tobacco groups, and Danish telegraph firms. Several companies hung the Star of David on the wall. He smiled, remembering that people on the ocean liner said that Jews had arrived in Shanghai to make a fortune as early as in 1843, after Britain defeated the Chinese Qing dynasty during the first Opium War. When the Bolshevik Revolution broke out in Russia, many Russian Jews, fearing persecution, had fled to Shanghai as well.
The fact that his fellow men had found successes in Shanghai gave him great confidence. Surely, he would make a living here. Admittedly, there were obstacles: he couldn’t understand the language, didn’t know anyone in Shanghai, and had no expertise in banking, engineering, baking, or trade. He loved photography and piano, but photography was a hobby and he had given up on piano a few years ago. But he was nineteen, and he was willing to do anything to survive.
He decided to try his luck at a barbershop behind the building with the Greek god; it had Russian words on the door and a faded poster of Rosh Hashanah on the window—his people, after all. He walked in. The shop had five empty chairs, and a middle-aged barber with a mustache, holding a broom like an ax, frowned at him. Before Ernest could ask, the barber shouted, “Get out of my shop.”
Stunned, Ernest backed out, a faint murmur chasing him. “Refugees. Rats!”
He had been called many things; this was new. He shrugged and continued his search down the street. He walked into one shop after another, offering his services as a clerk to a Russian hardware store owner, a hauling jockey to a French businessman in a leather and fur shop, then a dishwasher, a gear polisher, a fish fryer, or anything. No one would hire him. He left the stores, his head hanging low. He had been driven out of his home for being a Jew; now, after crossing the oceans to an alien land, he was driven out again for being a refugee.